White House immigration adviser Stephen Miller spoke by phone with the vice president of Equatorial Guinea the same day two men deported from the U.S. were hooded, bound and beaten by police, according to a new report.
The call took place on Sept. 11, the same day Ahmed Soliman and Samson Birhane were assaulted by armed officers at the Hotel Bamy, a makeshift detention site for 29 immigrants sent there under President Donald Trump's administration policy, The New York Times reported Friday.
Police hooded the men, bound their hands with rope, struck them with firearms and pushed them down a staircase while demanding to know where they'd hidden cellphones — which deportees had used to alert journalists and lawyers to the facility's worsening conditions, according to witnesses.
According to a statement posted on the website of Equatorial Guinea's ruling party, Miller and Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue — son of the country's longtime authoritarian president — discussed "different issues related to migration" during their call.
Neither the statement nor any available public record specifies whether the beatings that day, or the broader treatment of deportees at the hotel, came up in that conversation, and the White House has not detailed what was discussed.
The timing adds to a string of unanswered questions surrounding the deportation arrangement. On the same day as the call, U.S. Ambassador David Gilmour also met separately with the vice president, according to the Times.
Lawyers representing several of the detained men say they have sent repeated, unanswered emails to Gilmour and other embassy staff pleading for intervention as conditions at the hotel have deteriorated — including a lack of clean water, inadequate food, and the reported use of the facility to isolate a suspected Ebola patient.
Soliman and Birhane were both previously granted protection from removal to their home countries — Egypt and Eritrea, respectively — after U.S. immigration judges found they would likely face torture there.
The Trump administration nonetheless deported them to Equatorial Guinea this year as part of a push to send such protected immigrants to third countries willing to accept them, even without offering legal status. Equatorial Guinea has separately promised U.S. officials, in a diplomatic note, that it would not mistreat the deportees.
In court filings, the administration has argued it bears no responsibility for how a foreign government treats people once they've been transferred into that country's custody.
But the proximity of Miller's call to the vice president and the assault on Soliman and Birhane — both occurring the same day — has intensified scrutiny over how closely U.S. officials are tracking, or ignoring, what happens to deportees after they land in Malabo.
Neither the State Department nor the White House responded to requests for comment.